Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978)

Blue Collar, Paul Schrader’s first film, might not be easily identifiable as a Schrader film if you didn't know: for long stretches of time it almost feels like something arising organically from the factories and the surrounding community, particularly from the male workers who navigate between profane self-assertion and constant losing-battle economic anxiety. This doesn’t mean it feels like documentary – it increasingly submits to the mechanics of the plot and to the journey toward its final cinema-fist freeze-frame – but much of the movie carries an enormous feeling of ease and almost unmediated expression, with all three lead actors as fine as they’ve ever been. The film explores the complex equilibrium of the worker – at once proud of the union and what it represents but mostly contemptuous of the specific individuals who embody it; adhering to a traditional role as head of household while constantly on the lookout to subvert it with drugs and available women; sensitive to criticism and accusations of fallibility while constantly aware of their circumscribed place in the system. It’s a gripping film from beginning to end, but inevitably now it’s the sociological aspect that holds sway, given the subsequent decline of such labour-heavy production methods, and its consequences for the kind of worldview and social infrastructure Schrader explores. The film’s treatment of race is also notable: the film’s protagonists - two black and one white – are joined by what they have in common without being suspicious of what they don’t, until their unity poses a threat to the system, and so must be not just broken, but converted into active hatred. That ending freeze-frame isn’t subtle, but watching the movie now, it’s like a portal to the toxic present, in which such communities are plundered for easy votes, with never a shred of economic concession or compassion given in return.